Report on Aerschot.
Antwerp, Aug. 28, 1914.
The commission of inquiry on violation of the laws of nations and the
laws and customs of warfare, after an impartial and careful
investigation, can make the following report of its findings:
It appears from precise and concurring testimony that in the entire
region of Aerschot the Germans have committed veritable atrocities. The
majority of the population fled in terror. On their passage the German
troops set fire to farms and houses and furniture, shooting inoffensive
citizens whom they found along the road or who were working in the
field.
At Hersselt, north of Aerschot, thirty-two houses of the village were
set on fire; the miller and his son, who fled, and about twenty-one
other persons were killed; and all this while no Belgian troops were
visible.
The German troops penetrated into Aerschot, a town of 8,000 inhabitants,
on Wednesday, Aug. 19, in the morning. No Belgian forces remained
behind. No sooner did the Germans enter the town than they shot five or
six inhabitants whom they caused to leave their houses. In the evening,
pretending that a superior German officer had been killed on the Grand
Place by the son of the Burgomaster, or, according to another version of
the story, that a conspiracy had been hatched against the superior
commandant by the Burgomaster and his family, the Germans took every man
who was inside of Aerschot; they led them, fifty at a time, some
distance from the town, grouped them in lines of four men, and, making
them run ahead of them, shot them and killed them afterward with their
bayonets. More than forty men were found thus massacred.
They gave up the town to be pillaged, taking from private residences all
they could take, breaking furniture, and forcing safes. The following
day they lined up, three by three, the villagers whom they had arrested
the day before, taking one man out of each line. These they led to a
distance of about 100 meters from the town, taking with them the
Burgomaster of the town, Mr. Tielmans, and his son, aged 15½ years, and
his brother, and shot them.
Later on they forced the remaining villagers to dig holes to bury their
victims.
For three whole days they continued to pillage and set fire to
everything in sight.
About 150 inhabitants of Aerschot are supposed to have been thus
massacred.
The largest part of the city is totally destroyed. Five times the
Germans tried to set fire to the large church, the interior of which has
been sacked. The records of the town have been carried away.
The ambulance attendants, although wearing the Red Cross badge, were not
respected. One of them reports that German troops fired upon him while
he was collecting his wounded, and that they continued to fire even
though he displayed his Red Cross armband. Moreover, during the entire
day of the 19th, while he was engaged in hospital service, he was
threatened and ill-used. A German officer, among others, took him by the
head, thrusting against his forehead the butt of a revolver. A
collector, wearing the insignia of the Red Cross, was killed in the Rue
de l'Hospital on the evening of Aug. 19 by Germans.
Deny Any Civilian Attack.
From all the testimony taken it appears that the civil population of
Aerschot has in no wise participated in the hostilities, that no shot
was fired by them; that all the witnesses agree in pointing out the
improbability of the German version, according to which the
Burgomaster's son, a youth of 15½ years, and of extremely gentle
disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during
the night of Aug. 19. Still more improbable is the version of the
conspiracy organized by the Burgomaster. It is to be remarked that if--a
thing which is not known--a German officer has been hit on the Grand
Place, it might have happened by a stray bullet, German soldiers being
engaged in shooting in the neighboring streets in order to frighten the
populace.
Moreover, the Burgomaster, a very quiet man, had repeatedly warned his
fellow-citizens, by means of posters and circulars addressed to every
inhabitant of the town, that in case of invasion they were to abstain
from any hostility. These posters were still in evidence when the
Germans entered the city, and they were shown to them.
The German troops which were traversing localities situated on this side
of Aerschot indulged in the same horrors. They shot fleeing citizens and
set fire to and sacked private houses, all this without provocation.
At Rotselaer, for instance, they set fire to about fifteen houses. A
German officer, addressing an inhabitant whose house was afire, wanted
to make him declare, at the point of a pistol, that the fire had been
started by the Belgians. When this inhabitant protested, claiming that
the Belgians had left the town the previous evening, this officer
declared that if the Germans had set fire to the town it was due
probably to the fact that the civilians had fired at them, a fact which
is also denied by all the witnesses.
There, too, the German troops pillaged everything they could lay their
hands on during their passage.
Up to this writing the Commission of Inquiry has been unable to obtain
the testimony of inhabitants of Diest and Tirlemont, which towns were
occupied by the Germans on the 18th and 19th of August, 1914, and which
are cut off from communication.
However, the inhabitants of Schaffen, a town near Diest, have stated
that the same abominations were committed in their locality and in the
adjoining communities, Lummen and Molenstede. The whole region has been
laid waste. German troops, at an hour's distance from Diest, had begun
their work of destruction all along the highway from Diest to Beeringen.
Turning upon Diest they set fire to everything they could lay hands
on--farms, houses, furniture. Arriving at the village of Schaffen, the
Germans set fire to the town, massacring the few inhabitants who
remained behind, and whom they found in their houses or in the streets.
The witness gives the names and addresses of eighteen persons whom he
knows to have been massacred.
Among them are:
The wife of Francois Luyck, 45 years old, and her 12-year-old daughter,
who were discovered in a sewer and shot.
The daughter of Jean Ouyen, 9 years old, who was shot.
Andre Willem, 23 years old, sexton, who was tied to a tree and burned
alive.
Joseph Reynders, forty years old, who was killed together with his
nephew, a lad of ten years.
Gustave Lodt, forty years old, and Jean Marken, also aged forty,
probably buried alive.
The witness testifies that he personally proceeded to exhume these two
bodies, and that he afterward buried them in the town cemetery.
The village of Rethy, near Turnhout, was the object of devastation and
shooting during the day of Aug. 22 by seventeen cavalrymen who had
penetrated into the village. A young woman of fifteen years was killed
by a bullet.
Still more horrible crimes, if that were possible, have been committed
by the German troops on account of their defeat at the hands of the
Belgian Army before Malines. The City of Louvain, with its artistic and
scientific riches, has not been spared.
New reports will be submitted very shortly.
GOOREMAN, President,
ERNST DE BUNSWYCK,
Secretary of the Commission.
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